Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Friday 30th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said that this was at the heart of the Bill, in the sense that I think he is right; it illustrates one of the Bill’s great problems. It has emerged from this debate—the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, made it clear—that this is very uncertain in medical terms, yet doctors are being asked to provide it. Why is that happening? Well, because it is a necessary gateway. Therefore, it seems to set up perverse incentives in the mind of the doctor, and it creates a professional problem.

Most doctors who will wish to give such a prognosis will be in favour of assisted dying; that would seem the natural likelihood of all this. If they therefore want to give the patient, or the applicant, what he wants, they will be less likely to want to inquire about and help with all the other, possibly better, treatments that might solve the problem. The patient may be in a situation in which they want to die and do not want to solve the problem. It seems that this is putting a big burden on doctors, and it is not right, professionally.

Why is this burden being put on them? It is the result of the views of the Bill’s progenitors. I think— I am guessing here—that the reason they concentrated on six months is that they are desperate to get it through in some way and they could see how difficult it would be if you started to argue about unbearable pain, for example. What is the definition of unbearable? How does it have a scientific or objective definition?

It seems to me that, if it is passed and six months is the only medical criterion, it will quickly become obvious that it was not adequate as a reason for doing it—but, of course, by then, the Bill’s progenitors will have scored their main hit by getting it into law that autonomy triumphs and assisted dying exists. Then, later, they will say—rightly—that if we have assisted dying, this is a silly or inadequate criterion so we need other ones and more of them. I am sorry to use the tired phrase, but it seems to be a slippery slope.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I will make a very quick point. I was not expecting to speak on this, so I apologise for not being prepared. When I was at Cambridge, I worked on many risk communication tools that were used by doctors to help calculate somebody’s prognosis, particularly of cancer, and to communicate it to patients. A standard way of communicating that prognosis was to say, “Out of 100 patients with characteristics like yours, we would expect X number to be alive in one year”, or five years, or whatever. I do not think it is unreasonable for us to be asking what “reasonable” means in terms of the number out of 100 who would survive at, say, six months.